Malorn's Planetside Manifesto. Anyone Have it?

[eveninglion]

Originally Posted by SGTalon

How is the Hex system so much different than the Lattice System? They accomplish the same thing but add the ability to spread the front line out to more than just the few main bases. It also gives the small towers and outposts more importance in the flow of the battle.

In PS1 there was no real benefit to taking towers except to deny the enemy a spawn point. Now they have real value from a resource, base capture, vehicle, and spawn standpoint.

Just because it isn't the same as PS1 doesn't mean it sucks.

In board games terms the PS1 lattice system is called a point-to-point movement system. From any given position, you only had a limited amount of valid places you could move to next. The lattice system consolidated battles because the base you just captured only opened one or two bases you could capture next. This funneled the players and increased the potential participants of a battle. However, this did lead to the point you made about small outposts being left behind, and battles only taking place at large bases.

The hex grid movement system in PS2 is markedly different from the lattice system, as with each base capture, the number of potential spots to attack next (at the very least) doubles. This is because each hex is always connected to multiple valid points of attack, limited only by terrain and enemy opposition. This also means that battles are now going towards the outposts as well as non-base terrain (large fields etc). The downside of this is that due to the nature of the hex system, the front line is much more spread out, meaning that each battle had less potential participants simply by the virtue of having increased options of where to go next. The zerg somewhat alleviates this problem as people tend to flock to these large groups for increased chances of a good fight (although the zerg has problems in itself that I won't go into here).

So while both serve as movement systems, the details and effects of one are vastly different from the other. The lattice focused the conflict to a few key points, thus ensuring a high population of participants in each fight, but failed to include outposts and other non-base areas in the equation. On the other hand, the hex system allows for more freedom of movement and attack, with battles taking place in outposts and surrounding terrain now; but also expanded the front line greatly which potentially diffused the amount of participants in the big fights. That's my understanding of the debate thus far. Please note that I did not play PS1, so if my analysis of the lattice system was incorrect I would greatly appreciated if someone with the knowledge of its details could correct me. Thanks for reading!